Living "as if"- the Power of Intentions

This article first appeared on Soulseeds where I post several times a week, along with many other articles and resources.

When I was 17 and finishing high school, I wanted a career in property. So I wrote to the CEO’s of every major property investment firm in Sydney. Most of them sent back form letters thanking me for my interest but declining an interview, but a few kindly invited me to call and schedule an interview. I had to scramble as I had no suitable clothes, no resume and no experience beyond my paper route, although in my defense I had visited a lot of properties delivering papers. When the day arrived for my first interview, I thought I had thought of everything. I had researched the way business people dressed and what they carried. My intention was to turn up looking and sounding like I was already a business person. Half an hour before I was due to leave home, I realized that I had forgotten to buy one crucial piece of my outfit- a pair of black socks to match my gray suit. There was nothing even close in my closet. Not to be put off, I had what to this day may remain my craziest idea. I took a black marker and scribbled some socks on my ankles. I put my shoes right on top of my bare painted feet and went off to my first job interview. During the interview I looked down and noticed that the marker was smudging. Holes were growing in my fake socks right before my eyes. I kept both feet planted on the floor and no one seemed to notice.

By the time I left the interview, I had my first job offer. 3 weeks later I turned up for my first day at work….with REAL black socks on. Within one year in this job, another altogether different passion took hold of me and I left that job to set out on a path towards my calling as a spiritual leader. I learnt something profound from my brief foray into the corporate world, something that I intuited before the interview, about the power of impressions. The spiritual truth is that the first person you need to convince is yourself. The third big life lesson was that sometimes you have to improvise to reach your dreams. If you have a dream to be someone, the place to begin is to live as if you are already that person. Live as the person you aspire to be and start now. In the words of the 18th century German writer Goethe,

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

Attracting Your Intentions

Over the past few weeks I have been writing about the power of intentions. First I wrote about imagining the end point and working backwards. In this my last article about intentions for the time being, I want to focus on the potential to be who you want to be right now and work forwards. In between the first article and this one, I wrote about the power of perseverance, creative inspiration and relationships in setting intentions.

My intention here is to inspire you with examples, from my own life and others, ordinary stories about fake socks and cocktail napkins, of people who have embodied their dreams. No matter how old you are, you are too young to give up on your ideals. No matter how overwhelmed you feel, you have more resources than you imagine. No matter what obstacles you see in your path, this is the time to get clarity on your dreams and begin making them a reality by living them, walking them, dressing in them, thinking them, talking them and breathing them with every breath.

I know someone who took this advice to extremes. She had a deep desire to be in a relationship with a man but there was no one in her life at the time who rocked her boat. Before she met her future partner, she bought him birthday cards and anniversary cards, and even went so far as to buy two tickets to some upcoming concerts. Sure enough, she met him within weeks. Now I’m not saying this always works out so neatly. We can’t always explain why and in whose timing things do or don’t turn up in our lives. There is power in living AS IF things are already true. If at some point, you change your path or alter your course, then clarify your new dreams and make your new dreams a reality.

I love the story about a man with a passion for singing. He was good, but couldn’t land a singing job that paid the bills. So he improvised. He found a job that paid the rent, where he could sing all day long to his heart’s content. He became a bus driver, in fact quite a famous bus driver in Chicago. People would time their trips in the hopes of catching his bus. He said in an interview, “I drive the bus to get a captive audience every single day”, and no one seems to mind one little bit.

Do the best you can to align your intentions with your reality. Let your intentions and who you are become hand and glove, and you will find a way to manifest all that you want to be in the world. Your life will sing and people around you will enjoy your authenticity.

Try it out. When you get up in the morning, after brushing your pearly whites, get dressed as the person you want to be, the person you know yourself to be beyond all the self doubting voices and negative talk. Walk as that person. Be that person. Live that person’s life.

Intentions Overcome Obstacles

Very often when you live AS IF something is already true, you turn “as if” into I AM and I CAN. During the week I was trying to write and it just wasn’t flowing. So I decided to take a break and turned on the TV in perfect time to see part of the memorial service for Betty Ford. I received the inspiration I needed. I caught a clip from Presidential Historian Richard Norton Smith. He spoke movingly about Betty as someone who broke the mould of what you expect from a First Lady. In one nice turn of phrase he described her as “The feminist next door, a free spirit with a dress code.” She overcame her own obstacles to create the possibility of recovery for many. Smith told the story of a time before the Betty Ford Treatment Center had opened. She was on Frank Sinatra’s private jet and conversation turned to funding for the new center. She had no pledge cards on hand, so she improvised and took the first pledges for the Betty Ford Center on Frank Sinatra’s cocktail napkins.

She had clear intentions and nothing was going to stop her. That’s the way with clear intentions. You find a way and often improvise on the details. Betty Ford also believed through her own recovery that she was serving a Higher Power. She held her intentions accountable to this higher purpose. This is part of what makes it possible to overcome obstacles. When you are fully committed to a worthy cause, some higher energy moves with you. Doors open that you couldn’t have imagined, hurdles turn into spring boards to make giant leaps and gains. You can call this higher energy any number of things, including God, but whatever you call it, it is a conspiracy of coincidences that colludes to make your intentions inevitable.


Talking Up Your Intentions

Do you ever catch yourself, saying things that sabotage your intentions? “It’s never worked before”, “Others have tried”, “I don’t expect this to work but….” If you are truly serious about making your intentions a reality, then align your language with your intentions.

There is a You Tube video that recently went viral about a blind guy who was sitting on a street corner asking for money. He had a sign that said, “I’m blind. Please help.” A woman stops at his mat and writes something on his sign. He doesn’t know what it is, but quickly people begin leaving more and more money in his jar. Later the woman comes back and says to him, “I wrote the same message with different words. Finally the sign is revealed, “It’s a beautiful day and I can’t see it.”

Frame your intentions in the most positive, empowering, optimistic language. Take the same three sabotaging sentences and turn them around.

It’s never worked before becomes, “I will now do something new and exciting.”

Others have tried becomes, “I will continue what others have started and do it in my own unique way that no one else has ever tried before.”

I don’t expect this to work becomes, “I’m going to give this every chance of success.”

Find Your Authentic Swing

When it comes to setting intentions, you have to be willing to try, swing, miss, change, try alternatives, try again, and make choices. You need to see various paths unfolding in front of you, and choose the one that is most authentic. Let me end with an example from golf. I’m no great golfer, but the times I have played golf I never could understand the practice swing. I have the sort of golf swing that you don’t want to practice. The less I repeat that swing the better……

When I saw the movie based on the novel The Legend of Bagger Vance, I came to appreciate the practice swing. A great golfer, Ranolph Junuh, is left traumatized from fighting in WW1. After the war, Bagger Vance becomes the voice of his Higher Power, the voice of intention, as he overcomes his demons to play golf again. There is a description in the novel of a conversation between Vance and Junuh about the swing of another golfer, Jones.

Around Jones, encompassing his body in vibrating concentric fields, spread an aurora of energy. It seemed to be his body, but expanded, augmented. It was a field itself. Then there were other fields, an infinitude of them. You could see his will, as Bagger Vance said, his intention select the field he chose, which was the fairway and the target line. Lines of force, which were chromatic not just visually but aurally as well, vibrating like music, extended from Jones' intentionality down the fairway to the target area. But there were at least two exceptional aspects to this will and to the force lines it apprehended.
First, the force lines seemed to exist outside time, independent of it. And second, they seemed to exert an intentionality of their own. Let me try to be precise, for this is exceptionally important.

Jones waggled now and set himself over the ball. I saw his swing before he swung it. But it was not a single swing, as if predetermined; rather it was a number of swings, I would guess a hundred, two hundred, all vibrating simultaneously in Jones' field, as if in alternative futures. Possible futures. They were all recognizably Jones' swing. But some were duffs, tops, skulls, and so on. Bad swings. I could see Jones' will search among those swings, like you or I would hunt through a file drawer for a patient's chart. Jones seemed to settle. To still himself. The auroras surrounding him consolidated. The bad swings fell away, evaporating like a dream; colors intensified around the swings he had intentioned, until there were only half a dozen very closely arrayed swings remaining. As Vance had said, intelligence seemed to pour from Jones' grip, from his hands ("educated hands" no doubt). Receptive intelligence, searching the Field, drawing from it and upon it. Then Jones swung. In actuality. You could see his motion in the physical dimension track along the motions he had intentioned, not perfectly, but very close to those pre-swings that existed outside of time. I was numb, dumbstruck; I couldn't absorb it. The ball rocketed away down lines of force, with everything humming and glowing and vibrating in some keen cosmic harmony.

I must remember that the next time I play mini golf, as I try to plan for the ball to ricochet off a windmill before going down a shute, across a bridge and into the hole in one shot.

Setting intentions is like preparing for a golf swing, rehearsing a speech or making a pro and con list. There are a number of paths your intentions could take, and they are all possible. Few, if any, of them would be a mistake. But one of them is your most authentic path. Finding that path is the gold. When you find your authentic path, nothing can stop you. It will be true in that case that you can do your work and step back, letting go of the outcomes because you have already succeeded.

In that sense it is true that if you follow your heart and build what fills you with passion, the right people will come at the right time and for the right reasons.

The Sufi poet Hafiz once said, “I should not make any promises, but I know that if you pray, somewhere in this world -- something good will happen.”

If you set intentions that come from your highest self, align your life with those intentions, live and breathe them with perseverance, then something amazing will happen, somewhere and sometime.

Getting Ego Out of Intentions

This article first appeared on Soulseeds where I post several times a week.

Yesterday I rode 50 miles on my bike to watch an Australian rugby team beat a New Zealand rugby team. Not that there’s any rivalry between Aussies and Kiwis :). But it was a glorious day and made extra special by being with the only Kiwi I know in America. Isn’t it funny the way we feel some sort of pride when our team wins? As if I was on the field……

Just in case my head swelled too much to fit into my helmet, I was brought back down to earth with a thud on the ride. I thought I was doing pretty well until an 80 year old man pedaled past me like a streak of light. He was pulling two kids in a buggy behind his bike, and they were stopping at garage sales along Lakeshore Drive. Every time they stopped at a sale, I rode past thinking to myself, “How do you like me now old timer?” Sure enough a mile or two down the road, he flew past me again, now with dolls houses and scooters from the sale piled on top of the kids in the buggy. It was my ride on the inner roller coaster called “Ego”. This was supposed to be a relaxing ride on a beautiful summer’s day and a nice time with friends. That was my intention. But a tiny word with a massively sinister plot threatened my enjoyment until I realized what was going on.

Intentions are so much more powerful and effective when you are aware of the role of ego. This is part 4 in a series of articles on intentions. First I described the power of visualizing an end that excites you and then working backwards to make it happen. Then I wrote about perseverance, where you find whatever resources you need to continue moving towards your vision and no matter what the obstacles you keep going. Third, I wrote about creative inspiration when you tap into a power that is within and around you with effortless effort. Now I want to take the conversation a little further by looking at the role of ego in setting intentions.

What the world needs now, at this troubled time, is for many people to step up with bold intentions that serve the common good. Too much of what we see right now is ego driven. The news about Rupert Murdoch closing down his News of the World paper is an example of egotistical intentions catching up with a business. His intention to run a media empire of epic proportions led him to compromise acceptable standards of ethics and stoop to hacking into private voice mail systems, a strategy that interfered with the investigations of missing children. What began as a worthy intention, ie to inform the public, was hijacked by ego and led astray by an insatiable desire for power and profit.

Modern day capitalism is a brilliant and worthy intention. In itself it is not egotistical. It supports economies and efficiencies that have the ability to create common wealth and serve the common good. But when ego takes over, in the guise of an insatiable desire for size and power, capitalism becomes a destructive force; industries fix prices, companies avoid tax, bribe officials and control the outcome of elections. In these cases, ego gets in the way of the intention of running an efficient and profitable business and comes back to haunt all of us; such as banks that have to be bailed out because their collapse would destabilize global systems.

It happens at an individual level as well. The desire for control in relationships is insatiable. When one person sets the intention to get what they can from a relationship or a work colleague, no matter what they have to do to get it, it becomes destructive.

There are other subtle ways that ego infiltrates intentions. Setting intentions based on prestige or appearance is another example of the ego’s insatiable desire for importance. If you desire more money or prestige because you think it will complete you as a person, this is a trick of the ego. Ego says, “If only I have this amount of money, this property, or this partner I will be happy.” You need to turn this sentence around for healthy intentions. Once I get happy with who I am right now, then I will start manifesting my highest intentions.

Healthy intentions follow the golden rule. If you are looking for more money, then be more generous and participate in the easy flow of money. If you are looking for more acknowledgment, then acknowledge others and participate in the easy flow of praise or encouragement or positivity. Whatever you are looking for in life, start by giving to others and you will avoid ego’s traps.

Enough of the ego driven intentions. We’ve had enough destructive intention, enough corruption, enough violence- enough EGO. Whether it’s the imperial intentions of media magnates or the personal intentions of individuals like you and me, the world is crying out for intentions that serve the common good. The first step is to ask some questions of your intentions. Shine some light on them to see why they are important and who they are serving.

The Motivation for Intentions

We get some clues about this from the world of super heroes. My favorite super hero has always been Wonder Woman and not just because of her star spangled spandex speedoes. She was a ground breaker, bringing women into the super hero realm and paving the way for Zena Princess Warrior and Lara Croft and others. One of Wonder Woman’s secret weapons was her Golden Lasso, an unbreakable rope that corrals the truth of out of people like a cattle herder. When her mother gave her the Goden Lasso, she said,

This is the Golden Lasso. Besides being made from an indestructible material, it also carries with it the power to compel people to tell the truth. Use it well, and with compassion.

Maybe in the past you were taught that God is like a cowboy in the sky, ready to lasso you if you slip up and bring you back into line. God as John Wayne or Gene Audrey, and you as the cattle. That’s not what I’m talking about. The Golden Lasso is a personal thing. It’s also known as your conscience. Swing it round in your mind and consciousness like a lasso and it can garner all the inner truth you need. Use it well and with compassion.

The Golden Lasso is the foundation of the Golden Rule. Once you realize at a deep level the truth that you are one with others, you transcend the ego’s delusion of separateness and set intentions that benefit everyone involved. The Golden Rule becomes completely natural and effortless.

Lasso the truth of your intentions’ motivations. Are they self serving, or do they take into account the broadest circle of concerns possible? Be truthful with yourself, listen to your inner motivations, and act on your highest intentions that come from a place of self awareness and an authentic desire to see the world change for the better.

Healthy Sense of Self

When you set intentions, the point is not to remove your ego. The point is to have a healthy sense of self. Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki said, “How much "ego" do you need? Just enough so that you don't step in front of a bus.” That’s a good starting point, but I think we need more ego than that. You need enough ego to get out of bed in the morning. You need enough ego to believe that you can make a difference in the world and you need enough ego to trust that you have a unique calling in the world.

Where ego becomes a problem is when it tries to convince you that you are a self made person, separate from all others and that your actions don’t impact others. You aren’t a self made person. You are made up of all sorts of other people. Ego becomes a problem when it convinces you that your intentions are more important than other people’s intentions, or that your intentions don’t affect other people.

I remember being in a prayer meeting in rural Australia many years ago. Someone in the group prayed for a dry day so that they could enjoy their family picnic. This was in drought stricken territory where another dry day would mean the loss of another farm. This is an example of an egotistical intention.

A more extreme example was something I heard about after the Columbine shootings in 1999. It was a chain email written by a girl who was in the school on the day of the shooting. Even though she was in the firing line, miraculously bullets sprayed around her and she was not shot. She claimed it was because she was part of a prayer group which met in the school and as the shooters moved around the school she was praying for protection. If her assessment was correct, this would mean that God caused the same bullets which narrowly missed her to, in turn, hit and kill 13 other teenagers.

However you understand God, it makes no sense to me that God would play Russian roulette with people’s lives choosing for some people to be saved while others die. However you understand the universe of intentions, it’s egotistical to set intentions that don’t include the widest group possible. The universal field of intentions wants good for everyone, even if we don’t always understand the timing or unfolding of events in our life. Regardless of your perspective on the cause and origin of intentions, set intentions that serve the greatest good for the greatest number.

It’s Not All About You

When it comes to setting healthy intentions, it is always about more than yourself. Occasionally I play a game with the kids when I drive them to school. We set the intention to drive all the way to the school without stopping. There is only one rule- it has to be legal. This sometimes involves slowing down well before a red light so that it changes before we get there. Everyone in the car is literally on the edge of their seats.

There is one flaw in the game, and it’s an important truth that relates to setting intentions. There are OTHER people on the road. If you set intentions that ignore other people, you are likely to end up in a car wreck. There are things you can’t control, like traffic lights and other people’s actions. Set intentions that include as many stakeholders as possible. Don’t play Russian roulette with other people by setting mindless intentions.

What this means in practice is that if you set intentions that disregard the people around you, it will end in disaster. It also means that if you are in a relationship where one partner is setting healthy intentions and the other person is not participating, it won’t work. If you have the most awesome intentions and strategies for parenting, but your kids are not participating, it won’t work. The right idea at the wrong time won’t work. The wrong idea at any time won’t work.

Set healthy intentions that take into account true empowerment for as many people as possible. Begin with your own motivations.

Bold Intentions For the Good of Humanity

I’ve given plenty of examples that describe intentions wrapped in ego. Let me end with a wonderful example of intentions that include a healthy sense of self. The more I understand of the life of Betty Ford who passed away this past week, the more impressed I am. She was a true super hero in the mould of Wonder Woman. After dealing with her own demons, she set the intention to make a difference in other people’s lives. You would think that having the highest profile drug and alcohol treatment center in the country named after you might be an ego trip.

On the contrary, apparently she agreed to her name being associated only reluctantly. In fact, it was a matter of accountability for her. She said this, “The center's name has been burden, as well as honor. Because even if nobody else holds me responsible, I hold myself responsible."

I like to believe that so many people have been helped by Betty Ford and her treatment center because she set healthy intentions to begin with, and did so with a healthy sense of self and a desire to genuinely empower people in their recovery just as she was empowered.

What are your bold intentions for yourself and the world? Whether you set large scale intentions like treatment centers or whether it’s the intention to live in more peaceful relationships or the personal intention to live with greater balance, get your ego out of the way and get on with the business of being the change you want to see in the world. Participate in the raising of a global intention, galvanizing the collective power of millions of kindred spirits, to bring healing to the world, one person, one community and one nation at a time. There is an abundance of the resources that matter most. Together we have the power to transform entire systems for the greater good of all of humanity, for generations to come.